The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity

On-line since: 21st October, 2006

THE REALITY OF FREEDOM(SPIRITUAL ACTIVITY)

xii

MORAL IMAGINATION(DARWINISM AND MORALITY)

A FREE SPIRIT
acts according to his impulses; these are intuitions chosen by
means of thinking from the totality of his world of ideas. The reason an
unfree spirit singles out a particular intuition from his idea world in
order to use it as a basis for a deed, lies in the world of perception given
to him, i.e., in his past experience. Before making a decision he recalls
what someone else has done or recommended as suitable in a similar instance,
or what God has commanded to be done in such a case and so on, and he acts
accordingly. For a free spirit these preconditions are not the only impulses
to action. He makes an absolutely original decision. In doing so he
worries neither about what others have done in such an instance, nor what
commands they have laid down. He has purely ideal reasons which move him to
single out from the sum of his concepts a particular one and to transform it
into action. But his action will belong to perceptible reality. What he brings
about will therefore be identical with a quite definite perceptual content.
The concept will be realized in a particular concrete event. As concept, it
will not contain this particular event. It would be related to the event
only in the same way as a concept in general is related to a perception, for
example, as the concept, lion is related to a particular lion. The link
between concept and perception is the representation (cp. p. 32, f.).
For the unfree spirit this intermediate link is given from the outset. At the
outset the motives are present in his consciousness as representations. When
he wants to do something he does it as he has seen it done or as he is told
to do it in the particular instance. Here authority is most effective by way
of examples, that is, by conveying quite definite particular actions to
the consciousness of the unfree spirit. The Christian, as unfree spirit, acts
less on the teaching than on the example of the Redeemer. Rules have less
value when they refer to positive deeds than when they refer to what should
not be done. Laws appear in the form of general concepts only when they
forbid something, not when they bid things to be done. Laws concerning what
he should do must be given to the unfree spirit in a quite concrete form:
Clean the walk in front of your door! Pay your taxes in such and such an
amount to the Treasury Department, etc. Laws which are meant to prevent
deeds take on conceptual form: Thou shalt not steal. Thou shalt
not commit adultery! But these laws also influence the unfree spirit
only through reference to a concrete representation such as that of the
corresponding earthly punishment, the pangs of conscience, eternal damnation,
and so on.

As soon as the impulse to action is present in general conceptual form (for
example: Thou shalt do good to thy fellow men! Thou shalt live in a way that
best furthers thy welfare), then in each case must be found first of all
the concrete representation of the deed (the relation of the concept to a
perceptual content). For the free spirit, who is driven neither by any
example nor by fear of punishment, etc., it is always necessary to transform
the concept into a representation.

By means of imagination representations are produced by man out of his world
of ideas. Therefore what the free spirit needs in order to carry out his
ideas, in order to bring them to fruition, is moral imagination. Moral
imagination is the source from which the free spirit acts. Hence, only
people with moral imagination are also morally productive in the real sense
of the word. Those who merely preach morality, that is, people who devise
moral rules without being able to condense them into concrete
representations, are morally unproductive. They are like those critics who
know how to explain rationally what a work of art should be like, but are
incapable of any artistic creation themselves.

In order to produce a representation, man's moral imagination must set to
work in a definite sphere of perception. Men's deeds do not create
perceptions, but transform already existing perceptions, that is, impart a
new form to them. In order to be able to transform a definite perceptual
object, or a sum of such objects, in accordance with a moral representation,
one must have grasped the laws at work in the perceptual picture (the way it
has worked hitherto, to which one now wants to give a new form or a new
direction). Further, one must find a way by which these laws can be
transformed into new ones. This part of moral activity depends on a
knowledge of the sphere of phenomena with which one has to do. It must
therefore be sought in a branch of general scientific knowledge. Hence moral
deeds presuppose not only the
faculty of moral ideation
[Only superficiality could find in the use of the word
“faculty” in this and other passages, a reversion to the teachings of
older psychology concerning soul faculties. The exact meaning of this word,
as used here, will be seen when compared with what is said on p. 29.]
as well as moral imagination, but also the ability to transform the sphere of
perceptions without breaking the laws of their natural connection. This
ability is moral technique. It can be learned in the sense in which
science in general can be learned. Because people usually are better able to
find the concepts for the already created world than productively out of
imagination to decide future deeds, not yet in existence, it very well may be
possible that persons without moral imagination receive moral representations
from others, and skillfully imprint these into actual reality. The opposite
may also occur that persons with moral imagination are without the technical
skill, and therefore must make use of others for carrying out their
representations.

Insofar as knowledge of the objects in the sphere of our activity is
necessary, our action will depend upon this knowledge. What must be
considered here are laws of nature. Here we have to do with
natural science, not with ethics.

Moral imagination and the faculty of moral ideation can become objects of
knowledge only after they have been produced by the individual. By then
they no longer regulate life, but have already regulated it. They must be
explained in the same way as all other effective causes (they are purposes
only for the subject). We therefore deal with them as with a natural
philosophy of moral representations.

In addition to the above, one cannot have ethics in the form of a science of
standards.

The standardized character of moral laws has been retained at least insofar
as to enable one to explain ethics in the same sense as dietetics, which
deduce general rules from the life-condition of the organism in order that
on this basis they can influence the body in a particular way.
[ 51 ]
This comparison is mistaken, because our moral life is not comparable with the
life of the organism. The function of the organism takes place without our
doing anything about it; we find its laws present, ready-made, and therefore
can investigate them and then apply what we discover. But moral laws are
first created by us. We cannot apply them until they have been created. The
mistake arises through the fact that moral laws, insofar as their content is
concerned, are not newly created at every moment, but are handed over. Those
that we take over from our ancestors appear as given, like the natural laws
of the organism. But they can never be applied by a later generation with
the same rights as can dietetic rules. For they apply to individuals and
not, like natural laws, to examples of a species. As an organism I am such
an example of a species, and I shall live in accordance with nature if I
apply the natural laws of the species to my particular case. As a moral
being I am an individual and have laws which are wholly my own.
[ 51a ]

This view seems to contradict the fundamental teaching of modern natural
science described as the theory of evolution. But it only seems to do
so. By evolution is meant the real development of the later out
of the earlier in accordance with natural law. By evolution in the organic
world is meant that the later (more perfect) organic forms are real descendents
of the earlier (imperfect) forms, and have developed from them in accordance
with natural laws. According to his view, the adherent of the theory of organic
evolution would have to represent to himself that there was once a time on
earth when it would have been possible to watch the gradual development of
reptiles out of
proto-amniotes,
[ 52 ]
if one could have been present there as
observer and had been endowed with a sufficiently long span of life. He also
would have to represent to himself that it would have been possible to observe
the development of the solar system out of the
Kant-Laplace primordial nebula
[ 53 ]
if, during that infinitely long time, one could have occupied a suitable
spot out in the world-ether. The fact that in such a representation, both
the nature of proto-amniotes and that of the Kant-Laplace primordial nebula
would have to be thought of in a way other than that of the materialistic
thinker, will not be considered here. But it should not occur to any
evolutionist to maintain that he can extract from his concept of the
proto-amniote the concept of the reptile with all its characteristics, if he
had never seen a reptile. And just as little could one extract the solar
system from the Kant-Laplace primordial nebula, if this concept is thought
of as being determined only from the direct perception of the primordial
nebula. In other words, this means: if the evolutionist thinks consistently,
then he is able to maintain only that out of earlier phases of evolution later
ones come about as real facts, that if we are given the concept of the imperfect
and the concept of the perfect, we can recognize the connection;
but never should he say that the concept derived from what was earlier
suffices to develop from it what came later. In the sphere of ethics this
means that one can recognize the connection of later moral concepts with
earlier ones, but not that as much as a single new moral idea could be
extracted from earlier ones. As a moral being, the individual produces his
own content. This content which he produces is for ethics something given,
just as reptiles are something given for natural science. Reptiles have
evolved out of proto-amniotes, but from the concept of the proto-amniote the
natural scientist cannot extract the concept of the reptile. Later moral
ideas develop out of earlier ones, but from the moral concepts of an earlier
cultural epoch ethics cannot extract those for a later one. The confusion
arises because when we investigate nature the facts are there before we gain
knowledge of them, whereas in the case of moral action we ourselves first
produce the facts which we afterwards cognize. In the evolutionary process
of the moral world order we do what nature does at a lower level: we alter
something perceptible. As we have seen, an ethical rule cannot be
cognized straight away like a law of nature; it must first be created.
Only when it is present can it become the object of cognition.

But can we not make the old the standard for the new? Is it not necessary
for man to measure by the standard of earlier moral rules what he produces
through his moral imagination? For something that is to reveal itself as
morally productive, this would be as impossible as it would be to measure
a new species in nature by an old one and say, Because reptiles do not
harmonize with the proto-amniotes, their form is unjustified (diseased).

Ethical individualism then, is not in opposition to an evolutionary theory
if rightly understood, but is a direct continuation of it. It must be
possible to continue
Haeckel's genealogical tree,
[ 54 ]
from protozoa to man as organic being, without interruption of the natural
sequence, and without a breach in the uniform development, right up to the
individual as a moral being in a definite sense. But never will it be possible
to deduce the nature of a later species from the nature of an
ancestral species. True as it is that the moral ideas of the individual have
perceptibly evolved out of those of his ancestors, it is also true that an
individual is morally barren if he himself has no moral ideas.

The same ethical individualism that I have built up on the foundation of the
preceding consideration, could also be derived from an evolutionary theory.
The final result would be the same, only the path by which it was reached
would be different.

The appearance of completely new moral ideas through moral imagination is,
in relation to an evolutionary theory, no more of a marvel than is the
appearance of a new kind of animal from previous ones. Only such a theory
must, as monistic world view, reject in moral life and also in science,
every influence from a Beyond (metaphysical) which is merely inferred and
cannot be experienced by means of ideas. This approach would then be
following the same principle which urges man on when he seeks to discover
the causes for new organic forms and in doing so does not call upon any
interference by some Being from outside the world, who is to call forth
every new kind according to a thought of a new creation, by means of
supernatural influence. Just as monism has no need of supernatural thoughts
of creation for explaining living organisms, neither does it derive the
morality of the world from causes which do not lie within the world we can
experience. The monist does not find that the nature of a will impulse, as a
moral one, is exhausted by being traced back to a continuous supernatural
influence upon moral life (divine world rulership from outside), to a
particular revelation at a particular moment in time (giving of the Ten
Commandments), or to the appearance of God on the earth (Christ). Everything
that happens to and in man through all this becomes a moral element only if
within human experience it becomes an individual's own. For monism, moral
processes are products of the world like everything else in existence, and
their causes must be sought in the world, i.e., in man, since man is the
bearer of morality.

Ethical individualism, therefore, is the crowning of that edifice to which
Darwin
[ 55 ]
and Haeckel aspired for natural science. It is spiritualized science
of evolution carried over into moral life.

Whoever from the outset restricts the concept natural within an arbitrary
boundary, in a narrow-minded manner, may easily fail to find any room in it
for the free individual deed. The consistent evolutionist is in no danger of
remaining at such a narrow-minded view. He cannot let natural development
come to an end with the ape, while granting to man a “supernatural” origin;
in his search for man's ancestors he must seek spirit already in nature;
also, he cannot remain at the organic functions of man and consider only
these to be natural; he cannot but consider the free, moral life of man to
be the spiritual continuation of organic life.

In accordance with his fundamental principles the evolutionist can maintain
only that a new moral deed comes about through a kind of process other than
a new species in nature; the characteristic feature of the deed, that is,
its definition as a free deed, he must leave to direct observation
of the deed. So, too, he only maintains that men have developed out of not yet
human ancestors. How men are constituted must be determined by observation
of men themselves. The results of this observation cannot possibly
contradict a true history of evolution. Only if it were asserted that the
results exclude a natural development would it contradict recent tendencies
in natural science.
[We are entitled to speak of thoughts
(ethical ideas) as objects of observation. For, although the
products of thinking do not enter the field of observation,
so long as thinking goes on, they may well become objects of
observation subsequently, and in this way we can come to know
the characteristic feature of the deed.]

Ethical individualism, then, cannot be opposed by natural science when the
latter is properly understood; observation shows freedom to be
characteristic of the perfect form of human conduct. This freedom must be
attributed to the human will, insofar as this will brings purely ideal
intuitions to realization. For these do not come about through external
necessity, but exist through themselves. When we recognize an action to be
an image of such an ideal intuition, we feel it to be free.
In this characteristic feature of a deed lies its freedom.

From this point of view, how do matters stand with regard to the
distinction, mentioned earlier (p. 22 f.) between the two statements: “To be
free means to be able to do what one wants,” and the other: “To be able,
to desire or not to desire, as one pleases, is the real meaning of the dogma of
free will”? Hamerling bases his view of free will on just this distinction
and declares the first statement to be correct, the second to be an absurd
tautology. He says: “I can do what I want. But to say, I can will what I
want, is an empty tautology.” Now whether I can do, that is, transform into
reality what I want, what I have set before me as the idea of my doing,
depends on external circumstances and on my technical skill (cp. p. 43). To
be free means to be able to determine for oneself by moral imagination the
representations (impulses) on which the action is based. Freedom is
impossible if something external to me (mechanical processes or a merely
inferred God whose existence cannot be experienced) determines my moral
representations. In other words, I am free only if I produce these
representations myself, not when I am only able to carry out the impulse
which someone else has induced in me. A free being is someone who is able to
will what he considers right. One who does something other than
what he wills, must be driven to it by motives which do not lie within
himself. Such a man is unfree in his action. Therefore, to be able to will what
one considers right or not right, as one pleases, means to be free or unfree,
as one pleases. This, of course, is just as absurd as it is to see freedom in
the ability to be able to do what one is forced to will. But the latter is
what Hamerling maintains when he says:

“It is perfectly true that the will is always determined by motives, but
it is absurd to say that it is therefore unfree; for a greater freedom one can
neither wish for nor imagine than the freedom to let one's will realize itself
in accordance with its strength and determination.”

Indeed, a greater freedom can be wished for, and only this greater is true
freedom. Namely: to decide for oneself the motive (foundation) of one's
will.

There can be circumstances under which a man may be induced to refrain from
doing what he wants to do. But to let others prescribe to him what he
ought to do, that is, to do what another, and not what he
himself considers right, this he will accept only insofar as he does not
feel free.

External powers may prevent my doing what I want; they then simply force me
to be inactive or to be unfree. It is only when they enslave my spirit,
drive my motives out of my head and want to put theirs in the place of mine,
that they intentionally aim at making me unfree. This is why the Church is
not only against the mere doing, but more particularly against impure
thoughts, that is, against the impulses of my action. The Church makes me
unfree if it considers impure all impulses it has not itself indicated. A
Church or other community causes unfreedom when its priests or teachers take
on the role of keepers of conscience, that is, when the believers must
receive from them (at the Confessional) the impulses for their actions.

Addition to the Revised Edition, 1918:
In this interpretation of the human will
is presented what man can experience in his actions and, through this, come
to the conscious experience: My will is free. It is of particular
significance that the right to characterize the will as free is attained
through the experience: In my will an ideal intuition comes to realization.
This experience can only come about as a result of observation, but
it is observation in the sense that the human will is observed within
a stream of evolution, the aim of which is to attain for the will the
possibility of being carried by pure ideal intuition. This can be attained
because in ideal intuition nothing is active but its own self-sustaining
essence. If such an intuition is present in human consciousness, then it
is not developed out of the processes of the organism (cp. p. 31 ff.),
but the organic activity has withdrawn to make room for the ideal activity.
If I observe will when it is an image of intuition, then from this will the
necessary organic activity has withdrawn. The will is free. This freedom of
will no one can observe who is unable to observe how free will consists in
the fact that, first, through the intuitive element the necessary
activity of the human organism is lamed, pressed back, and in its place is
set the spiritual activity of idea-filled will. Only one who is unable to
make this observation of the two-fold aspect of will that is free,
will believe that every will-impulse is unfree. One who can make the
observations will attain the insight that man is unfree insofar as he is
unable to carry through completely the process of repressing the organic
activity, but that this unfreedom strives to attain freedom, and that this
freedom is by no means an abstract ideal, but is a directive force inherent
in human nature. Man is free to the degree that he is able to realize in his
will the same mood of soul he also experiences when he is conscious of
elaborating pure ideal (spiritual) intuitions.